Golan Haberfield Maaka

Golan Haberfield Maaka (4 April 1904 – 17 May 1978) was a New Zealand medical doctor and one of the country's first full-time Māori general practitioners. A bright child he was educated at Heretaunga School in Hastings, Te Aute College and Dannevirke High School. He received a scholarship to study medicine at the University of Otago commencing his studies in 1924. As a fifth year student he wrote a dissertation on the public health conditions at Rātana Pā. He graduated MB, ChB in 1937 becoming a house surgeon at Napier Hospital where he had been working as a medical officer since the early 1930s. In 1938 he joined the Far East Relief Fund, run by the Order of St John and the Red Cross, to work in China. He worked at a Presbyterian Mission Hospital at Yichang which came under Japanese attack. Because of the fighting he had to leave China by an overland route arriving back in New Zealand in 1939. Although trained in western medicine he also used Māori traditional healing methods (rongoā). He researched the blood groups of Māori with haematologist John Staveley collecting samples from Ngāi Tūhoe.

Maaka died in Whakatāne on 17 May 1978.

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